A Career in Tax

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by Meredith Gorton

In any economic situation, a career in tax is going to be in high demand and low supply in the United States. The demand comes from the fact that taxation on individuals or corporations is a political and economic survival tool for government agencies, whether they are at the city, state, federal, or international level. A position in tax is ensured to be in low supply due to two primary factors:

In the United States, we have an income-based tax system, while the large majority of the world bases theirs on consumption (sales tax). Our tax code is much more complicated than that of other countries so it creates a barrier to utilizing non-U.S. trained tax professionals. The ability to export work or import tax professionals from other countries will have little impact on supply because the consumption-based tax expertise they possess is not relevant in the United States. For the political reasons mentioned above, our current tax code structure is not expected to change dramatically in the future, thus maintaining the strong demand for tax professionals in our present and future economy

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We are also facing a shortage of tax professionals in the U.S. for the foreseeable future because careers within the tax profession have not been promoted aggressively since the Baby Boomers entered the workforce. As predicted in TaxTalent's 2013 Tax Market Assessment http://www.taxsearchinc.com/2013_Tax_Market_Assessment.pdf, the supply of tax professionals will continue to shrink in all major tax brackets. As the Baby Boomers begin to retire and move out of leadership roles, the Gen X population replacing them will be half the size. At this point, we do not have an ample supply of Millennials (a.k.a. Gen Y) coming in behind them to account for this massive loss. For basic supply and demand reasons and for the political nature of taxation from a jurisdictional point of view, you have a limited risk of not finding employment opportunities if you follow the correct action steps towards pursuing a career in tax.

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